Heavy rains swelled creeks and rivers and washed-out roads and highways across Southeast Georgia Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, November 6-7, 2024, for the second time in three months.  Clearly, the 2024 hurricane season has not been good for the Southeast.

Hurricane Debby exited the Gulf of Mexico and through the Big Bend area of Florida on August 5-6, 2024, and dumped 15 inches of rain in some areas north of Jacksonville. In Tattnall and many surrounding counties, 8-12 inches were reported, and dirt and paved roads suffered damage never seen before in this area. About seven weeks after Debby moved north, Hurricane Helene formed in the Gulf and passed through on a path slightly west of Tattnall and Toombs and brought straight line winds above 90 mph into the area along with tornadoes in the early morning hours of Friday, September 27.  It cut a path of utter destruction through Southeast Georgia while creating widespread power outages and knocking trees down across major highways before moving north to devastate areas in the Carolinas and Tennessee with high winds and heavy rain.

Meteorologists expected the system that moved northeast across South Georgia last week to drop a predicted maximum of around three inches locally, but areas in Tattnall have recorded nearly ten inches with isolated locations experiencing up to 12 inches unofficially. The unpredictable weather patterns throughout the United States (and the world) seem to be closing out 2024 in bold print with multiple exclamation points.

Tattnall County Road Superintendent Lynn Cribbs may not need a haircut before Christmas, since he has been pulling his hair out since early August. On his Saturday list, 21 roads (paved and dirt) were blown out mostly by pond dams that failed. Five paved roads, including Hillview, Evergreen, Battle Creek, Levi Kennedy, and Birdford, have suffered severe damage and currently closed. It is a deja vu moment when the memories of blown-out roads in early August were fresh on the minds of locals.

“We are currently accessing the damage and trying to move as quickly as possible to get all the roads repaired, but it is a complicated process,” Cribbs said.  “For example, the Hillview Road damage is going to be a very expensive fix, and we are trying to go through the process to get funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help pay for it.  One problem is we were just getting the water damage repaired from Hurricane Debby, and the wind damage cleaned up from Hurricane Helene, and then we get what was supposed to be a fairly normal rain system that was predicted to drop up to three inches on us and it drops 11 or 12 inches in some areas.    

“We are trying to fix those blown-out dirt roads as fast as possible, because so many of our citizens depend on those roads to get to their homes or farms,” he continued.  “Our people are working as hard as they can, and we are hoping for weather that will let us get it done.”

Tattnall County Commission Chairman Jackie Trim agreed.  “This weather has been unprecedented,” he said.  “In my 80 years in Tattnall County, I have never seen anything like this.”

Chairman Trim is not the only county official who is having to work around the weather.  Tattnall County School Superintendent Dr. Kristen Waters and the Board of Education have endured weather and road conditions that have led to 13 days when students did not attend school before the Thanksgiving break. There have been some other days when parents had to meet busses at drop-off points because dirt roads were impassable.  

Compared to those many years this writer worked in the system when there was an estimated average of less than two weather days missed per year (many years we had none) and the extent of weather-related problems in the United States is becoming harder to ignore. Flash floods in nations around the world are adding to the body of evidence.